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13.2 Customer Relationships and Selling Strategies
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Understand the types of selling relationships that firms seek.
- Be able to select the selling strategy needed to achieve the desired customer relationship.
Customer Relationships
Some buyers and sellers are more interested than others in building strong relationships with each other.
Generally speaking, however, all marketers are interested in developing stronger relationships with large
customers. Why? Because serving one large customer can often be more profitable than serving several
smaller customers, even when the large customer receives quantity discounts. Serving many small
customers—calling on them, processing all their orders, and dealing with any complaints—is time
consuming and costs money. To illustrate, consider the delivery process. Delivering a large load to one
customer can be accomplished in just one trip. By contrast, delivering smaller loads to numerous
customers will require many more trips. Marketers, therefore, want bigger, more profitable customers.
Big box retailers such as Home Depot and Best Buy are examples of large customers that companies want
to sell to because they expect to make more profit from the bigger sales they can make.